The National Library of Finland is committed to supporting the openness of scientific publications

On 4 September, the European Commission and Science Europe published the Plan S initiative, aimed at accelerating the transition to open access publishing by 2020. So far, 11 European research funding organisations have committed themselves to the initiative. The National Library of Finland also strongly supports the goals of the initiative.

The aim of Plan S is to have research funded by public grants immediately and openly available. Open access to scholarly publications enables utilising research results throughout the society.

At the moment, a large part of scientific research is published in traditional scientific publications subject to a subscription fee. In many of these journals, an article can be made into an open one by paying a separate charge. Funders committed to the Plan S initiative demand that from the beginning of 2020 onward, research results will be published in fully open scientific publications or on open access platforms.

The National Library of Finland supports the Plan S objective of moving to open access publishing of research results. The FinELiB consortium, coordinated by the National Library of Finland, is currently negotiating with scientific publishers with the goal of transferring subscription fees to cover the costs of open access publishing. This means that researchers would be able to publish their articles open access without any separate charges. The Plan S Preamble states that such transformative agreements will advance the dismantling of paywalls, provided that the transition period to immediate open access publishing is short.

“Plan S will further accelerate the negotiations. It is time for scientific publishers to understand that the transition to open access publishing must be made now”, says Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen, service director of the National Library of Finland. “It is very important that European countries proceed together”, continues Hormia-Poutanen, who is also a member of the high-level Open Science Policy Platform working group, established by the European Commission.

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The National Library of Finland is the oldest and largest scholarly library in Finland.
It is responsible for the collection, description, preservation and accessibility of Finland’s printed national heritage and the unique collections under its care.